And You Will Know Us by the Trail…

Paul WolfowitzWe’re going to war, and I sincerely hope that this war will be successful, swift and merciful. Like many Americans, I have great confidence that this will be the case. What really worries me is what we will reap from this doctrine of “preemption” that has come to the forefront of American foreign policy. Though it’s a bit late, both this major piece in Newsweek and this NY Times Column by Paul Krugman call the Bush administration on its bull-headed, unilateral intentions. This way of dealing with the rest of the world will clearly, inevitably lead only to more turmoil. We’re not securing our national interests at all with this action; rather, we’re all but ensuring many more years of global enmity towards the U.S.

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How to Raise a Dog

Doggie daddyhood is way more involved than I realized. Not only is it terribly time-consuming and expensive, it’s also full of unexpected perils. Over the course of just three and a half months of daddyhood, I’ve had to help see Mister President through a worm infestation, a puncture wound from a dog fight, diarrhea, swallowed squeaky toys that aren’t meant to be swallowed, motion sickness during the course of just about every car ride he’s ever taken, and spraining my own ankle. The latest happened tonight at the park when another dog, unprovoked, snapped and tore Mister President’s ear — actually tore it — and now the poor guy needs stitches. At least I’m putting the veterinarian’s kids through school.

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Feeding on RSS

NetNewsWireIf like me, you’re new to the concept of RSS, here is the lowdown: ‘Really Simple Syndication’ is an XML dialect that allows Web content to be easily re-purposed. Just about anybody, including me, can publish content in RSS format and have it effortlessly re-used by any number of RSS-compatible means… like, for instance, the terrific NetNewsWire, a news reader for Mac OS X that “can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs, making it quick and easy to keep up with the latest news.”

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Remembering Superman

Superman: The Movie Something prompted me to go back and watch the first two installments of Christopher Reeve’s “Superman” movies over the weekend. The first film is fondly remembered by critics, and while I enjoy it still, I could never quite explain its enduring quality. On the other hand, its sequel, which held together so well for me when I was in grade school, is a lazy disaster.

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New-monia

There is a mysterious ‘respiratory illness’ wending its way through Southeast Asia. No one is quite yet sure what it is, but there is speculation that this is a new, deadly strain of influenza. It’s touched Hong Kong, China’s Guangdong province, Singapore, and Hanoi — that last city is not only sensitive for me because of my heritage, but also because my girlfriend, currently backpacking through the region, just left that city less than a week ago.

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Spring Day

The current temperature in New York is 49º F, and tomorrow it may reach as high as 59º F — I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for this. This winter was cruelly, unnecessarily long, and made tougher by the fact that I had to raise, train and walk my new puppy in the worst of it. The last week or two I was nearing my breaking point with the incessant cold weather, and I was feeling tremendously down and beleaguered. But today I took a long walk for no better reason than it was absolutely pleasant out, and I finally feel like myself again.

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Read My Lips

Caught on Film In a rare sign of industriousness, Congressional Democrats have assembled a damning catalog of President George W. Bush’s disingenuousness. One of my favorites is Bush’s grandstanding pronouncement just this past fall that, “One of the ways we’ve got to make sure that we keep our economy strong is to be wise about how we spend our money. If you overspend, it creates a fundamental weakness in the foundation of economic growth. And so I’m working with Congress to make sure they hear the message — the message of fiscal responsibility.” Not long thereafter, his administration proposed a budget that would plunge the nation into a $300 billion deficit.

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Posterization

Saigon PostersClark MacLeod: “Saigon Poster Art is a growing collection of pictures of hand painted posters found displayed all over Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.” MacLeod has done a good job; it’s a charming little assemblage of street imagery that’s well worth a look.

I remember this kind of advertising/propaganda from my travels in Viet Nam as well as Thailand. It was an uneasy feeling when I came to the realization that the reason these posters were hand-painted and not printed is because human labor is cheaper than technology in that part of the world… and even in attempting to emulate technologies like photography and printing, human labor can produce weirdly beautiful results.

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